Learning the Culture

Culturally relevant pedagogy involves teaching in a way that displays a cultural understanding and involvement.  Being able to accomplish this in your classroom involves a major time commitment to understanding and involving yourself in your student’s cultures.  I work to build my cultural understanding of my students by simply getting involved in school events and holding conversations with them, just getting to know them as people, not just as students.  As a white woman teaching primarily black males, I have some ground to cover.  I do that by being open and kind and genuinely interested in what my students are involved in.  I go to their games, watch their recommended TV shows, and listen to their favorite artist.  This also helps me to build a rapport with them and improve the classroom environment in general. 

In my school, cultural relevant pedagogy is very important to the highest level of success.  In order to truly engage the students on a deep level, it is almost necessary to make the content relevant, so I am lucky to be able to see all kinds of great teaching achieving this every day.  I do this by taking the information that I gather and working it into problems or projects.  I definitely see a jump in engagement when I work this into my lessons and it really does pay off, especially when the students make comments like “wow you really do pay attention.”  That definitely puts a smile on my face.